Hello Blogosphere!

This is the start of my blog! It's something I've been thinking of doing for a while, and now here it is!

I'm going to be talking about pretty much whatever grabs my attention. Usually this will involve things like Linux (especially Kubuntu, my distro of choice), technology, popular culture, and maybe a bit of politics too.

One of my favourite subjects at the moment is Last.fm. For the uninitiated, it's like a combination of MySpace, a jukebox, and an internet radio station. You can download the player, and it will help you install plugins in programs like iTunes or Windows Media Player. Then, everything you play will be recorded (or scrobbled, as they say in their FAQ) to your profile. They will then provide recommendations for listening, in the form of a My Recommendations radio station.

Once a week, it generates your Neighbours, who are people with similar musical tastes to you. It then provides you with a My Neighbourhood radio station, which shows what your neighbours are listening to.

I highly recommend everyone who is even remotely interested in music of any type give it a go. If you've got an iPod, it can apparently scrobble tracks played on that every time you sync it with iTunes, so you've got no excuse. I only wish I could getting the scrobbling working in Kubuntu with my 2nd generation iPod shuffle.

You can also create widgets to go on your web pages, blogs, MySpace or Facebook profile etc. Examples of two of these, the Album Quilt and the Playlist Player, are shown here on my blog.

There's a lot more to it than that, but I'll leave it to you to discover it all yourselves.

It's free for a basic account. You can also pay a bit for a subscriber account (as I've done) in order to get more services. It's only £1.50 sterling per month at the moment, which I think is a bargain. I'm also pleased that they not only had the player for Linux, they had a .deb package specifically for Ubuntu.

Here's my profile. Feel free to add me to your friend list if you want (I've so far been unable to persuade any of my friends who I actually know in person to sign up, so I look like a bit of a Billy-No-Mates at the moment!)

In the meantime, here's something that a colleague told me about from YouTube (thanks Jo). If (like me) you love the Simpsons, you have to see this...